I’m so tired of drinking nothing but Pickwick or Lipton when I’m at my parent’s house. Recently they’ve had Twinings which is a step up. A very small step, granted, but still up. So for Christmas 2010 I decided to do the sort of thing I hate and give someone else something that I was interested in rather than something they were interested in. I bought some free flow pyramid bags (because I know better than to throw loose tea at someone who only ever have a cup once in a blue moon anyway) from A C Perch’s, stuffed as many as I could fit inside a 250g tin from same and wrapped it for her. In my defence it wasn’t her only present, I also got her something from the Body Shop. Further in my defence, she had bought me a tea light holder. AGAIN! I counted them all yesterday. I now have in my possession 16 tea light holders. And I never light candles, tea lights or otherwise.

Those bags come in boxes of 30 and I wanted there to be something to choose from, so I got two different boxes. I could have got one of the sampler-y boxes they had with four or five different kinds in it, but I liked these better. This one and the breakfast blend. They’re classic basic teas without a ton of flavouring and stuff.

Anyway, that left me with a total of 60 teabags. In case you haven’t tried it yourself, that does NOT fit inside a 250g tin. So I stuffed as many in the tin as I could and kept the rest in the boxes and just gave her the tin. If she founded she didn’t really like these I saw no reason to saddle her with two whole boxes of them. I’ve told her I’ve got the rest and she can have those as well if she wishes.

Which she does, I’ve decided, because later that Christmas my father asked me, no ordered me to get some tea that I could have at their place because he was tired of giving me that cheap stuff knowing that it was a lower quality than I would ever buy for myself. He despises tea, thinking it one of the most vile substances on the planet next after bananas, but he’s into whisky (which I think is absolutely horrid and disgusting) so although neither of us can have the others’ drink of interest without pulling faces, we understand each other perfectly.

So I’ll bring the rest of these boxes up next time I see them. (I have considered doing something like that before, but never did. I can do it now because I’ve been told to, but otherwise I was raised to take what I was offered when a guest in someone’s house and not make a lot of unnecessary dietary demands. So everybody in my family knows it’s not what I drink at home when they give me a cheap teabag because that’s what they have, and I never complain about what they give me.)

In the meantime, I’ve nicked one.

This one I included because I expected it to be similar to my beloved Tan Yang Te Ji (♥), and I stared myself so blind on that fact that it wasn’t until I was asked about the Paklum (or in English apparently Packlon) was that I realised that it was a blend. It has white tea in it, supposedly the Paklum. What is Paklum? I’ve never heard of that before. My initial guess would be some sort of flowery scented something, but I’m assuming it must be the white tea in question. Paklum. News to me. Consulting the literature I can’t find anything about it, but according to the Google results I get it is indeed the white element.

Obviously this means that contrary to what I was expecting this is in fact nothing at all like the Tan Yang that I was expecting it to be. The smoky element is very very light, almost non-existant unless you know precisely what to search for, and the Paklum is giving the whole thing a floraly scented note.

It’s got a spicy sort of note that I recognise from the Tan Yang, but it’s much more obvious here. It’s more like the main note of it all here, along with the floral note, and I miss the deeper notes of cocoa and smoke and oranges. It has the grainy rye-y note as it should, but it seems thinner here. A bit diluted.

All in all, it’s not a bad blend. I could have lived without the white addition, but it’s infinitely better than whatever artificially flavoured stuff Pickwick can come up with. I wouldn’t buy huge amounts of this for myself at home, but it’s definitely good enough for having when visiting my parents.

My mom gets me things that she likes (rather than what I like) too. And we are sort of opposite opposites – for example the last gift she bought me was rain boots and an umbrella – both black with pink polka dots!! I would have preferred plain ones (and she knows it! She can’t seem to help herself!) Isn’t it the daughter who is supposed to be flashy and the mom telling her to tone it down, and not vice versa? ;)

Yes, and I’m really bad at taking things back to get them exchanged. Even though I have nothing to use another tea light holder for, I can’t make myself get it exchanged either. I can only really bring myself to do it if it’s clothes that’s not the right size or a book I’ve already got or something like that. At least this year it was a rather pretty white and grey china one. I think I’ll keep this one when I get rid of some of the others.
For my birthday I’m probably going to put the tea light holder tally on the wishlist and ask to please not get any more. I honestly don’t know what to do with these things.

Maybe a charity shop? A “free to a good home” sign on a table at work? :) I’ve done both! I feel funny about asking a gift giver for a receipt to return something too. I much prefer giving it to someone who might appreciate it or to charity where it might raise a little money and make someone happy for a little bit of $$.

I do wear my polka dot rain boots but cringe a little every time – they are useful. The umbrella is really over the top and I really want to give it too my coworker who has a daughter. It just looks like something a 10 year old should carry! I always lose umbrellas but funnily enough I can’t seem to actually lose this one!

Pak’Lum/Pak Lam was a source for Breakfast-style reds from around Fuding (like Pan’Yong/Tan Yang, from around Fu’an) where tea would be shipped to markets in Brittan and it’s colonies. Name wasn’t associated with whites, though the region has come to be and Da Bai bushes have been spread throughout the whole of Northern Fujian for the production of white and red teas. Bai Lin Gongfu is a synonym.

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My mom gets me things that she likes (rather than what I like) too. And we are sort of opposite opposites – for example the last gift she bought me was rain boots and an umbrella – both black with pink polka dots!! I would have preferred plain ones (and she knows it! She can’t seem to help herself!) Isn’t it the daughter who is supposed to be flashy and the mom telling her to tone it down, and not vice versa? ;)

Yes, and I’m really bad at taking things back to get them exchanged. Even though I have nothing to use another tea light holder for, I can’t make myself get it exchanged either. I can only really bring myself to do it if it’s clothes that’s not the right size or a book I’ve already got or something like that. At least this year it was a rather pretty white and grey china one. I think I’ll keep this one when I get rid of some of the others.
For my birthday I’m probably going to put the tea light holder tally on the wishlist and ask to please not get any more. I honestly don’t know what to do with these things.

Maybe a charity shop? A “free to a good home” sign on a table at work? :) I’ve done both! I feel funny about asking a gift giver for a receipt to return something too. I much prefer giving it to someone who might appreciate it or to charity where it might raise a little money and make someone happy for a little bit of $$.

I do wear my polka dot rain boots but cringe a little every time – they are useful. The umbrella is really over the top and I really want to give it too my coworker who has a daughter. It just looks like something a 10 year old should carry! I always lose umbrellas but funnily enough I can’t seem to actually lose this one!

Pak’Lum/Pak Lam was a source for Breakfast-style reds from around Fuding (like Pan’Yong/Tan Yang, from around Fu’an) where tea would be shipped to markets in Brittan and it’s colonies. Name wasn’t associated with whites, though the region has come to be and Da Bai bushes have been spread throughout the whole of Northern Fujian for the production of white and red teas. Bai Lin Gongfu is a synonym.

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Ang lives with Husband and two kitties, Charm and Luna, in a house not too far from Århus. Apart from drinking tea, she enjoys baking, especially biscuits, reading and jigsaw puzzles. She has recently acquired an interest in cross-stitch and started a rather large project. It remains to be seen whether she has actually bitten off more than she can chew…

Ang prefers black teas and the darker sorts of oolongs. She has to be in the mood for green and white, and she enjoys, but knows little to nothing about, pu-erh.

Her preferences with black teas are the Chinese ones, particularly from Fujian, but also Keemun and just about anything smoky. She occasionally enjoys Yunnans but they’re not favourites. She has taken some time to research Ceylon teas, complete with reference map, and has recently developed some interest in teas from Africa.

She is sceptical about Indian blacks as she generally finds them too astringent and too easy to get wrong. She doesn’t really care for Darjeelings at all. Very high-grown teas are often not favoured.

She likes flavoured teas as well, particularly fruit flavoured ones, but also had an obsession with finding the Perfect Vanilla Flavoured Black and can happily report that this reclusive beast has been spotted in a local teashop near where she works. Any and all vanilla flavoured teas are still highly attractive to her, though. Also nuts and caramel or toffee. Not so much chocolate. It’s a texture thing.

However, she thinks Earl Grey is generally kind of boring. Cinnamon and ginger are also not really a hit, and she’s not very fond of chais. Evil hibiscus is evil. Even in small amounts, and yes, Ang can usually detect hibiscus, mostly by way of the metallic flavour of blood it has.

Ang is not super impressed with rooibos or honeybush on their own. She doesn’t care for either, really, but when they are flavoured, they go usually go down a treat.

Ang used to have a Standard Panel of teas that she tried to always have on hand. She put a lot of thought into defining it and decided what should go on it. It was a great idea on paper, but in practise has been discovered to not really work as well.

Ang tries her best to make a post on Steepster several times a week. She tends to write her posts in advance in a word doc (The Queue) and posting from there. This, she feels, helps her to maintain regularity and stops her from making five posts in three days and then going three weeks without posting anything at all.

Angrboda is almost always open to swapping. Just ask her. Due to the nature of the queue, however, and the fact that it’s some 24 pages long at the moment, it may take a good while from she receives your parcel and until she actually posts about it.

Find Ang on…
Steam: Iarnvidia (Or Angrboda. She changed her display name and now is not certain which one to search for. She uses the same picture though, so she is easily recognised)
Goodreads: Angrboda
Livejournal: See website.
Dreamwidth: Ask her